Fall From Grace





Daley pushes Durbin off a cliff:

Dick Durbin needs a new speechwriter.

First, there was that needless line about the Nazis, Soviet gulags and Pol Pot in an otherwise tight, 3,000-word address last week to his U.S. Senate colleagues about treatment of suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay.

Then there was the wheedling, weepy, invertebrate tone of his conditional apology--six variations on the weasel words, "If I have offended anyone, then..."--Tuesday evening just hours after his fellow Democrat and longtime supporter Mayor Richard Daley branded his earlier remarks "a disgrace."

Not that I'm applying for the job or anything, but here is what Durbin should have said Tuesday:

"It's come to my attention that the mayor of the largest city in my home state raged at a news conference earlier today that I said our soldiers `in Guantanamo Bay are Nazis.'

"I'm surprised. Though Mayor Daley can't even pronounce Guantanamo--he says it `Gwa-ta-mahn-o.' And even though he blithely presided over the Cook County state's attorney's office during the biggest police-torture scandal in Chicago's history.

Hasn't Durbin ever heard of framing? He completely let the Republican noise machine define the issue so that it wasn't about the immoral Bush administration and its policies but about "the troops". As if criticizing the behavior of torturers was somehow traitorous. WTF? When are we going to develop a collective spine?

Posted: Thu - June 23, 2005 at 09:21 PM          

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